Requirements for online study - ESOL Class Contact Time

School of TESL Online students must be working with an ESOL class while enrolled in online classes. This may be a class you already teach, a class in which you assist or volunteer, or an ESOL class of at least five students that you have created just for the purposes of the course and with whom you meet at least two hours each week for the duration of the quarter (check quarter schedule dates).

You will be expected to implement activities (generally called “application assignments”) from your coursework with this group of students. Therefore, you need to think carefully about whether or not your contact time situation will allow you flexibility to try out activities. Some classes may require an activity each week; other classes require only occasional activities. See below for more details about the contact time requirement for specific classes.

When registering for an online class, review the course description and consider whether the content of the EPDES class is a realistic match for the type of students you will be working with. Checking the bookstore to review the required books may also be useful.

Application Assignments are to be done with the ESOL group you are working with in connection with the online class. If the activity does not seem appropriate to your group, you will need to adapt the activity, explain to the instructor why and how you adapted the activity, but ALWAYS keep the purpose of the activity in mind and meet the original purpose of the activity. If your ESOL class does not meet one week, it is still up to you to be creative and adaptive and meet the requirements of each assignment. Any issues should be discussed with your instructor. Contact Director, Bernice Ege-Zavala if you have questions about the contact time expectations.

The School of TESL may ask for verification of your teaching situation.

EPDES 930: TESL: Theory and Application: requires weekly application assignments. These may be listening, speaking, reading or writing activities.

EPDES 931: Methods of Language Acquisition: requires weekly application assignments.

EPDES 932: Teaching Grammar to ESOL Students: requires weekly application assignments, focusing on student grammar awareness and production (speaking and/or writing).

EPDES 933: Materials Selection and Development: requires weekly application assignments. These may be listening, speaking, reading or writing activities. Online students will develop their own materials to use with ESOL students.

EPDES 934: Developing ESOL Literacy: requires weekly application assignments, focusing on reading and/or writing. Note: a class that only focuses on listening/speaking is not appropriate for this class.

EPDES 935: Cultural Variables in TESOL: Concurrent contact time is not required for this class; however, online students are required to have had previous contact in an ESOL classroom. In addition, online students will need occasional access to non-native speakers for the purposes of a few assignments.

EPDES 936: Teaching Content to ELL: requires weekly application assignments, focusing on the development of content area knowledge. Online students are required to obtain a content textbook designed for native speakers (ie. a high school social studies textbook or a college level business textbook), so students need to be able to obtain such books (library, used bookstore, etc.) at the start of the course. This will be explained in the first modules of the course, but the online student must be able to obtain such a book. If you are traveling or living overseas, this may be difficult. In addition, online students must be able to communicate (by email) with a content-area teacher who has some ESOL students for the purposes of some assignments (ie., a community college health care teacher or a high school science teacher).

EPDES 937: Linguistics for ESOL Teachers: Concurrent contact time is not required for this class; however online students are required to have had previous contact in an ESOL classroom. In addition, online students will need access to a non-native speaker (beginning to intermediate level) for the final project, which requires an audio recording of a dialogue between a native speaker and a non-native speaker.

EPDES 938: Testing and Evaluating ESOL Students: requires weekly application assignments, focused on assessment of all skill areas (listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary).

EPDES 939: Student-Centered Learning in TESOL: requires weekly application assignments.

EPDES 940: Self-Analysis and Improvement in TESOL (field experience): requires 40 hours of contact time in an ESOL classroom.
Activities include:

• Comment on and ask your classmates questions about specific things that happen in the ELL class that are related to the topic of the week in the online class.
• Describe attitudes, learning styles, learning preferences, and learning strategies of the ELL students. These descriptions can come from observations or interviews.
• Record (video or audio) yourself or another teacher and analyze according to the topic of the week. This will happen each week in modules two through eight. (It is sometimes possible to analyze one recorded lesson for different topics and in different modules.)
• If you are an ELL Endorsement Candidate, you will select target students and target ELDs and then collect samples of student work that show the progress of those target students in those target ELDs.

EPDES 942: requires weekly application assignments, focusing on student pronunciation awareness and production practice. Students will need to be able to record and upload ESOL student speech for the final project. Appropriate formats are mp3 files or .wav files or .swf files.

EPDES 944: Curriculum and Program Design in TESOL: requires experience in an ESOL classroom. In addition, regular access beyond an individual classroom, including access to people in your institution to interview, access to course/program materials, and observation of classes (other ESL classes) is required.

EPDES 945: Computer-Enhanced Language Teaching in ESOL

• Participation in an ESOL classroom (minimum 3 hours/week) in which the students have access to personal computers or computer labs on a regular basis (for the duration of the quarter) to support language objectives. Ideally, the online student should be the teacher of the class. If not, the online student will need the classroom’s teacher’s support to occasionally design and implement activities with the students in the classroom and online.
• The ability to create and practice specific activities with ESOL students.
• The ability to require the students of an ESOL classroom to work online, preferably outside of the classroom, on activities that support the classroom’s language objectives.

Note: A computer-lab setting which is used primarily to teach computer-skills (and not to support language development) is not appropriate for the purposes of the EPDES 945 class.

EPDES 946: Professional Leadership in TESOL: does not require concurrent contact time. This class is required for WA State ELL Endorsement candidates only.

EPDES 960: Teaching English to Young Learners: requires weekly application assignments. Contact must be with students ages 5-11.

EPDES 961: Teaching Business English: Concurrent contact time is not required for this class; however online students are required to have had previous contact in an ESOL classroom.